EDITORIAL: Will the people still come when the service workers can’t stay?
Retirees and investors may still be flocking to Florida to find that “perfect life” or great investment opportunity, but unless more insurance regulation bills are written and passed, or more insurance assistance programs are offered for workers, those who live here will find few people left in the stores, shops, hospitals, law enforcement agencies and fire departments.
It has been well known by many “locals” in this area why there are few hometown kids who continue to live or start businesses here when they finish high school or return from college. It’s because this is one of those places where, unless their family has a business they can jump into or has enough of the right contacts to help them along in finding a job. Small towns like Port Charlotte, Englewood and Placida are not places where it is easy to get a solid initial foothold on your own. The good-paying jobs just aren’t here, particularly when you’re faced with big-city costs of living at the same time.
Local families with young children who are struggling to make ends meet look at the future for those kids and realize they won’t be able to go out on their own, find a simple job at a box store or a restaurant, grab a friend or two and rent a place to live. Those days were gone with the generation before them.
We are just starting to see how not only Hurricane Ian, but the Florida insurance companies’ cabal as a whole, are making it very difficult for working people to live here. Workers trying to mortgage a home have run into problems with higher interest rates as well as higher insurance premiums, leaving the state with the biggest drop in successful mortgages since 2014. Those who try to rent instead of buy are facing the highest rental rates in the state’s history, as well as landlords who will increase the rent even more to accommodate their increased costs as a property owner. Not to mention, as more affluent neighborhoods are developed every month, those residents cry out against affordable housing subdivisions being built in their backyard, claiming they will lower their property values and bring crime.
On top of all of that, many Florida companies – including some right in our own backyards – have already lost many workers because of Florida Senate Bill 1718, which was signed into law in May by Gov. Ron DeSantis. It is one of the harshest immigration laws to be implemented in the United States, as it includes steeper punishments for those who transport undocumented migrants into the state, a requirement for all businesses with 25 or more employees to use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers and a requirement for hospitals to ask patients whether they are U.S. citizens or are in the country legally, and to submit that information in reports to the state.
There are currently two types of workers in our area of Florida – those who have been to college or who have worked hard to find and keep a good job with a more lucrative paycheck and those who make minimum wage or just slightly above. People in the second grouping are less likely to hold a job for as long and tend to “job surf,” or often hold two or three jobs at a time to make ends meet. Others find their way into state assistance programs which, coupled with cash jobs paid under the table here and there, alleviate their need to work altogether.
To complete the picture, the average entry-level, median salary is $49,100. Florida’s minimum wage workers will gradually see an increase from the current amount to $15 an hour by September 2026.
The average home price in Placida is more than $800,000. In Englewood it is more than $400,000 and in Port Charlotte it is almost $400,000. The average rent in Port Charlotte is $2,000, not including utilities. In Englewood it is slightly higher.
It is easy to see why Florida is in the top three states for foreclosures right now and why so many renters in the last two years have been told to leave because the homeowner is selling the property.
Hurricane Ian put the icing on the cake for many. Do you wonder why you still see so many blue tarps on homes both on and off the island? It isn’t just because of a backlog of work for contractors. It’s also because some homeowners are faced with insurance premiums that have gone up – some as much as 400 percent – and they aren’t sure they want to put the money into a home they can’t afford to insure. Other homeowners have had to hire attorneys or public adjusters (or both) in an attempt to try to get close to the money they need from their insurance policies. When they do get a settlement they then have to pay the attorney and public adjuster fees, which puts them right back to not having enough to complete the job.
As we have recently reported, trying to sell a home “as is” with hurricane damage is a losing proposition, unless the home already needed extensive repair and the land was worth more than the home. That usually isn’t the case with working people, but putting even a new roof or new drywall in a home that you are going to turn around and try to sell doesn’t seem logical either … particularly when, under the circumstances, the home you once lived in could quite possibly no longer be insurable or mortgageable. That money put into basic repairs on the old, battered house would be better served as funds to find a new place to live.
Outside of central and north Florida’s agriculture areas, the state has always been driven by tourism, which requires service workers – from tree trimmers to fast food providers to police officers and physical therapists. Since COVID we have all seen the downturn in store and fast food workers and, since Hurricane Ian, we have watched those number dwindle even lower.
Since time began there have been people who don’t want to work. Who among those of us who have to work haven’t thought from time to time how nice it would be not to have live by that schedule and spend so much time away from home. And it’s easy to listen to the television or to social media preaching about the loss of work ethic in our younger generations.
But while my generation watched their parents and grandparents retire with pensions and multiple benefits, these younger generations have had to watch their parents and grandparents go without, while working full-time jobs … sometimes two or three. It’s hard to find your work ethic when you see the prices of every necessity and consider them to be almost unattainable. In this state, 401K programs, employee insurance programs and respectable wage increases are not offered for the average employee … whether you sit at a desk, pave roads tend million-dollar mansions. For most of these younger people who have the work ethic required to make it, or have a dream to start their own business, it seems like the only way to become successful is to leave this area.
According to future projections for the area based on insurance premiums, mortgage rates, access to affordable housing, the cost of vehicles (new and used), the cost of utilities, groceries and gas, we need to be prepared to see even more “help wanted” signs and to watch more of our young people moving out.
Marcy Shortuse is the editor of the Boca Beacon. She can be reached at mshortuse@bocabeacon.com
